Heart of Darkness

Responding to far-right critics who pick on a 10-year old because they think it's safer than going after his old man. Bad choice.

This column first appeared in the Idaho State Journal in 2013. It’s one of my favorites because I was able to kill several birds with one stone. Such opportunities are rare.

The background was that my oldest son, JR, wrote an essay about the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings for a school assignment that was good enough for the ISJ to run in the place of my column for the week.

I did not agree with everything that JR wrote in his essay, but I thought that it was a great argument for his point of view. I think that we should encourage kids to read, think, debate and certainly to write about big issues. I was proud of him for standing up for his point of view and being willing to do so in a most public way.

JR is not Greta Thunberg. This was a heartfelt one-off from a non-confrontational kid who mostly loved football and BMX bikes - but also had enough writing chops to defend a sophisticated position - without going after anyone.

Unfortunately, not everyone saw it that way. At that time the Tea Party was quite active in this area and a couple of local TP knuckleheads (and fellow ISJ columnists) took umbrage to JR’s column. It had to be brainwashing by his father, they argued. No kid writes that good, they claimed.

One of these two, despite being a weekly dinner guest of mutual friends where we could have discussed this over a meal, instead used his space in the ISJ to excoriate a 10-year old kid for having a point of view. The other wrote a column demanding the opportunity to interview my son, in person, without his parents around, to audit him for brainwashing. I kid you not.

All of this, of course, crossed a line obvious to all but the oblivious. Both of these two took great care to avoid me after this. So, as it often happens, I had to get after them the old-fashioned way - through satire.

What follows is a parody of “Apocalypse Now,” which is based on my favorite novel, “Heart of Darkness,” by Joseph Conrad.

The cast of characters. Kurtz is the doofus who wanted to have a private talk with my son. He refers to himself as “The Sargent,” so he got busted from colonel to the enlisted ranks for this piece. “Sarge” happened to be running for state representative at the time. He finished 4th in a 4-way race. Kilgore, the other of the pair, was known for appearing everywhere with two women everyone assumed were sister-wives. They had a houseful of cats. He frequently raged about gay marriage in the newspaper. Charley’s is a local LGBTQ club. D. Moore, a NRA official, was known for making long speeches before the Idaho legislature and not taking any follow up questions.

I was 12 when my first essay appeared in a newspaper. I am very proud of JR for beating me by two years. But he was upset by the controversy because kids at school hammered him over it. He never was keen on writing after that. I just hope that he rediscovers his passion for it again one day. He’s got the goods.

The anti-gun sentiment in this piece is part of the satire. I’m a strong 2nd Amendment advocate. But I’d like to think that I’m not a crazy 2nd Amendment advocate.

With apologies to Joseph Conrad and John Milius.

I received my orders from a secretive GOP political operative. “Your mission is to proceed up Rock Creek and search for Sargent Lance Kurtz. When you find the Sargent, infiltrate his campaign for State Representative by whatever means available and terminate it.

“Terminate the Sargent's campaign?”

“Affirmative. He's out there operating without any decent restraint, using unsound methods. Compromise is not in his nature - and neither is adult thinking. You are to terminate his campaign; terminate with extreme prejudice - before he makes us out to be a bigger bunch of fools than we are capable of all by ourselves.”

So that was that. I was going to the worst place in the world. Miles up a creek that snaked through Southern Idaho like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I was the one squaring up Sargent Lance Kurtz's delusions of grandeur.

It's your karma, pal.

Not far up the creek I encountered Private Ralph Kilgore. Kilgore (who in appearance was not terribly unlike the Pillsbury Dough Boy), along with his large and unusual tribe, were engaged in a blockade. It was a surreal scene. Thick smoke filled the air. Frankie Goes to Hollywood played loudly through lo-fi speakers on a nearby ATV.

“What's going on here,” I asked?

“We are here to protect everyone from Charley’s.”

“Wait. Do you mean Charlie, as in Vietnam?”

“No, I mean Charley’s, LGBT club for profligates in Pocatello; dirty dancing; an affront to everything decent and good.”

I remembered another mission, years ago, to infiltrate Charley’s for the purpose of upgrading their sound system. They seemed pleasant enough at the time.

Fortunately it was this memory that provided inspiration I needed. I dug into my rucksack and found an old Elton John CD. I flashed it, then turned and threw the CD toward the creek – stepping out of the way to avoid the ensuing stampede of Kilgore, two women and 38 cats - all following the arc of the CD toward the water.

As I moved on, I turned briefly to observe Kilgore emerge from the water, soaking wet, with his prize. “I love the sound of Candle in the Wind in the morning.” he said. “it reminds me of..., well, polygamy.”

The creek was like a gigantic serpent with it's tail deep in my destination - the heart of darkness. I'd get acclamation from the GOP for this, and I wasn't even in their damned party anymore.

Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the agony of certain defeat away. He just wanted to go out like a patriot, standing up - not like some poor, wasted, Tea Party renegade.

Even the voices in his head wanted him out of the race, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.

I reached Kurtz's compound and encountered a gatekeeper. His name, according to the label on his ragged Army jacket, was D. Moore. He spoke only in 45-minute monologues. “Hey, man, you don't talk to the Sargent. You listen to him. I used to think that I was just a hired gun. But the man's enlarged my mind. He showed me the nobility of my cause. He's a patriot-warrior in the classic sense...”

Three quarters of an hour later, well after sunset, the gatekeeper lapsed into silence and seemed, thereafter, oblivious to my presence.

Then, out of the darkness, Kurtz appeared. “You have no right to judge me,” he said. Jesus and the Second Amendment are your friends – where the rubber meets the road. If not, then they are enemies to be feared.”

“I remember once when we were on a mission... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a school to inculcate some children. We left after we had inculcated them with Jesus and the Second Amendment, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. We went back there, and their parents and teachers had come and gathered up each toy assault rifle, adorned with Bible verses, and had burned them.”

“And I remember... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my beard out. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The will to do that! And then I realized they were stronger than we. These were not liberals, these were informed people... Idahoans. These people who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the will... to do that.”

“If there are any more than a few dozen of such voters in my district, this election will be over with very quickly.”

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, consultant and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, llama farming, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth